May 09, 2006

The prospects for significant improvement in the world petroleum supply and demand balance appear to be fading. While U.S. production in 2006 will grow with recovery from the hurricanes, only moderate increases in OPEC and other non-OPEC production and capacity are expected. Steady and continued growth in world oil demand will likely combine with only modest increases in world oil production capacity leaving little room to increase production in the event of geopolitical instability. Crude oil prices will remain high through 2007.

May 04, 2006

Over the past three decades, Tony Marmot has been busy building an "energy farm". The farm utilizes solar energy, wind power, and bio fuel to generate modest amounts of electrical power. By "modest", I mean sufficient power to operate the vital infrastructure of a small community.

You can find a few pictures and an additional link to a video interview with Tony that lasts about 25 minutes at the link below.

April 20, 2006

While I don't believe that Peak Oil will be the end of civilization and bring about a new Stone Age, I am concerned about rising oil prices triggering a serious and prolonged depression.

To get a sense of what that might be like, take a look at this 45 minute documentary on how Gypsies survive in a shanty town outside of Belgrade. It's called Pretty Dyna. These modern day road warriors have found a means by which to eke out a subsistence level life by salvaging old car wrecks and breathing new life into them. Many of their vehicles would not be out of place in Mad Max II.

March 29, 2006

What has long been considered the unthinkable may finally be here. Peak Oil is the petroleum industry’s term for the point on the global production curve at which total oil production begins to decline.

Bellingham, WA (AP) March 29, 2006 -- When the mass media finally gets around to covering a story only insiders have been discussing, it is time to sit up and take notice. So far March has been an eventful month for Peak Oil coverage. At the beginning of the month, The NY Times published an editorial acknowledging that Peak Oil is a serious threat to our way of life: “The Age of Oil — 100-plus years of astonishing economic growth made possible by cheap, abundant oil — could be ending without our really being aware of it.” Shortly afterwards, the United States Army released a strategic report which states that Peak Oil is imminent and that the “days of inexpensive, convenient, abundant energy sources are quickly drawing to a close.” Finally, CNN began airing a six-part series on Peak Oil on March 18th.

Adapting to a world in energy descent will call for far more change than simply trading the family SUV in for a Prius. Oil is the miracle product of the past 150 years that permeates almost everything in our lives. Specifically, the petroleum molecule and its derivatives are used in the manufacture of medicines, plastics, alcohol, paints, building materials, cloth, glycerin, sulfur, detergents, synthetic rubber, solvents, nylon, polyesters, food additives, dyes and supplements, explosives, and insulating materials. It must be emphasized that our ability to grow food for 6.5 Billion people and transport it thousands of miles to local grocers is highly dependent on a steady supply of cheap fossil fuel.

Considering the many critical uses for petroleum, burning it for fuel is akin to burning a Picasso for heat.

According to Ed Ayres, editorial director of the World Watch Institute, we face "something so completely outside our collective experience that we don't really see it, even when the evidence is overwhelming. For us, that 'something' is a blitz of enormous biological and physical alterations in the world that has been sustaining us."

The various alternative energy sources, such as solar and wind power, are only capable of replacing a fraction of our current energy requirements. So-called "hydrogen energy" is viewed by many in the scientific community as little more than a cruel hoax. A return to burning coal will accelerate global warming.

There are two typical reactions to all this news: denial or a sense of hopelessness. Most people opt for the former after first dismissing the news with nothing more than, "Don't worry, someone will come up with some new technology to make it go away." They ignore the fact that technology runs on energy. Technology without energy is as useless as a Ferrari with an empty gas tank. A minority of people digs deeply into the available research material and then sinks into a sense of hopelessness.

There is, however, a third way to respond. We can recognize the fact that we can use Peak Oil to finally take a proactive role in shaping our lives and communities as the world enters into power descent, rather than merely being passive victims. To avoid doing so is to forfeit a watershed opportunity to shape our and our children’s future for the better.

This is what Karavans is all about: creating a positive vision for tomorrow and acting towards its implementation. In a time of rapid change and dramatic transformation, Karavans serves as a hub for disseminating new ideas, information, tools, and techniques for those committed to acting proactively.

Specifically, Karavans will cover unlocking of the food supply, moving off-the-grid, renewable energy, self-sufficiency, community and local economy building, ecological design, permaculture, and other matters germane to sustainable life-styles as the world powers down.

In the CNN series, former CIA director James Woolsey warns us, “If you don’t worry about oil interruptions, you are living in something of a Fool’s Paradise.”

About Karavans:Karavans is operated by Digital Caravans, LLC, a builder of online communities, marketplaces, and provider of business support to startups.

March 28, 2006

Alright, I'll admit that this book probably won't mention Peak Oil, but it will be of interest to people who are following it. David Korten is the author of When Corporations Rule the World. His new book, The Great Turning will be out in late April 2006.

I found this detailed description of it:

Description

David Korten's classic bestseller, When Corporations Rule the World was one of the first books to articulate the destructive and oppressive nature of the global corporate economy. Now, ten years later, Korten shows that the problem runs deeper than corporate domination--with far greater consequences.

Synopsis

In The Great Turning, David Korten argues that corporate consolidation of power is merely one manifestation of what he calls "Empire": the organization of society through hierarchy and violence that has largely held sway for the past 5,000 years. Empire has always resulted in misery for the many and fortune for the few, but now it threatens the very future of humanity. Korten points to global terrorism, climate change, and rising poverty as just a few of the signs that Empire has become unsustainable and destructive.

The Great Turning traces the roots of Empire to ancient times and charts the long evolution of its favored instruments of control, from monarchies and bureaucracies to the multinational institutions of the global economy. Korten also tells the parallel story of the attempt to develop a democratic alternative to Empire, beginning in Athens and continuing with the founding of the United States of America. But this remains an unfinished project--Korten documents how elitists with an imperial agenda have consistently sought to undermine the bold and inspiring "American experiment," beginning in the earliest days of the republic and continuing to the present day.

Empire is not inevitable, not the natural order of things--we can turn away from it. Korten draws on evidence from sources as varied as evolutionary theory, developmental psychology, and religious teachings to make the case that "Earth Community"--a life-centered, egalitarian, sustainable way of ordering human society based on democratic principles of partnership--is indeed possible. And he outlines a grassroots strategy for beginning the momentous turning toward a future of as-yet-unrealized human potential.

The Great Turning offers a new framework with which to understand our offers a new framework with which to understand our current predicament, grasp the potential of this historic moment, and take action for the future of our planet, our communities, and ourselves.

Endorsements

The Great Turning is a work of amazing scope and depth. This is a wise and is a work of amazing scope and depth. This is a wise and much needed book that shows we can create cultures where our enormous human capacities for joy, caring, and cooperation are realized."--Riane Eisler, author of The Chalice and the Blade

"Not only are we the ones we have been waiting for, THIS is the book we have been waiting for! It provides the context and stories that have been missing, leaving us with piecemeal analyses and solutions. The framework of the 5,000 year history of the Empire is very powerful and a big eye-opener about the deliberateness of the enslavement and oppression that has resulted from it. Off and on, I heard in my head the words, "the emperor has no clothes."--Jan Roberts, Director, Earth Charter USA Communities Initiatives

Table of Contents

Prologue: In Search of the Possible

Part I: Choosing Our Future1. The Choice2. The Possibility3. The Imperative4. The Opportunity

Part II: Sorrows of Empire5. When God Was a Woman6. Ancient Empire7. Modern Empire8. Athenian Experiment

Part III: America, The Unfinished Project9. Inauspicious Beginning10. People Power Rebellion11. Empire's Victory12. Struggle for Justice13. Wake Up Call14. Prisons of the Mind

Part IV: The Great Turning15. Beyond Strict Father Vs Aging Clock16. Creation's Epic Journey17. Joys of Earth Community18. Stories for a New Era

March 22, 2006

I just received a heads up that Salon magazine has published a four page article on Peak Oil. (Salon Peak Oil article) It does a pretty good job of covering the main personalities in the PO movement. You can read it for free by agreeing to view the ad. I particularly liked the final paragraph:

"I think that we can adapt, but our adapting may not be so much technological, as sociological, and maybe even spiritual," Robinson says. "It really comes down to the question of the place that we see for ourselves in the world and what we need in order to live a meaningful life. For quite a while now, a meaningful life in America has meant acquisition of things and cheap energy, and we associate that with freedom. We do not see that it's really a form of dependence and slavery. So, I see the potential for a much greater level of freedom and spiritual fulfillment and social cohesion, and restoration of balance with the natural world. This is one of the great possibilities that I see on the other side of the crisis, and whether we get to that is a question of the choices that we make now."

March 18, 2006

There's a book review in today's NY Times of American Theocracy by Kevin Phillips. For those who don't recognize the name, he is a long-time Republican party strategist dating back to the 1960s. In 1969, he published The Emerging Republican Majority and then went to work for President Nixon's administration.

His new book covers the three big trends he sees threatening America's future and that of the world as a result. The reviewer sums them up thusly:

...he identifies three broad and related trends — none of them new to the Bush years but all of them, he believes, exacerbated by this administration's policies — that together threaten the future of the United States and the world. One is the role of oil in defining and, as Phillips sees it, distorting American foreign and domestic policy. The second is the ominous intrusion of radical Christianity into politics and government. And the third is the astonishing levels of debt — current and prospective — that both the government and the American people have been heedlessly accumulating. If there is a single, if implicit, theme running through the three linked essays that form this book, it is the failure of leaders to look beyond their own and the country's immediate ambitions and desires so as to plan prudently for a darkening future.

Furthermore on the oil issue, the reviewer sums up Phillips' thinking:

The American press in the first days of the Iraq war reported extensively on the Pentagon's failure to post American troops in front of the National Museum in Baghdad, which, as a result, was looted of many of its great archaeological treasures. Less widely reported, but to Phillips far more meaningful, was the immediate posting of troops around the Iraqi Oil Ministry, which held the maps and charts that were the key to effective oil production. Phillips fully supports an explanation of the Iraq war that the Bush administration dismisses as conspiracy theory — that its principal purpose was to secure vast oil reserves that would enable the United States to control production and to lower prices. ("Think of Iraq as a military base with a very large oil reserve underneath," an oil analyst said a couple of years ago. "You can't ask for better than that.") Terrorism, weapons of mass destruction, tyranny, democracy and other public rationales were, Phillips says, simply ruses to disguise the real motivation for the invasion.